Category: youth

  • Should schools provide more than an education?

    Should schools provide more than an education?

    Ashley teaches Spanish at a public high school in the U.S. state of New Jersey that has a large percentage of students from low-income backgrounds. She has gone food shopping for families and has babysat for weeks while a parent had surgery. She has attended countless graduations, birthday parties and baby showers. She has spent thousands of dollars of her own money on students.

    Because school teachers can face negative repercussions for speaking out, I agreed not to use her last name or the last names of any of the other teachers in this article.

    Ashley is one of many teachers across the United States who perform duties beyond their job description, training and pay. They see it as a result of parents who must work multiple jobs due to greater financial hardship.

    “Anything can happen in this economy,” Ashley said. “A family can be one pay check away from being unhoused.”

    In the U.S. state of Colorado, Shannen teaches at a charter school — a taxpayer-funded, public school that operates under its own “charter,” giving it a degree of independence within local school systems. In November 2025, she voted to approve two propositions to boost Colorado’s universal free school meals program and food stamps program, known as SNAP, which subsidizes nutritious food for low-income families. In 2023, about 35% of SNAP recipients were children.

    “I think it’s a good thing to have in schools,” Shannen said. “We see a lot of kids with food insecurity, but who don’t want to say that, so it’s nice that it’s just available [for everyone]. We provide breakfast, snack and lunch.”

    Should schools feed everyone?

    According to a 2025 report from UNESCO, decades of international evidence support the benefits of universal school meals, including behavioral and academic improvement for students of all income levels, and less stigma compared to income-based eligibility.

    Yet Shannen and other teachers wonder if initiatives like this are sustainable — or just blurring the lines between school and home, and parenting and teaching.

    “I wish it weren’t so dependent on schools because then what happens on the weekends and in the summers?” Shannen said. “I don’t know if it should necessarily be the school’s role, but it ends up being the school because it’s the easiest. Teachers and administrators are asked to take on far more than just educating.”

    Ashley said that school is where many of her students get their needs met, and much of that support comes from teachers. “If I don’t supply medicines, they’re not getting them,” she said.  She also buys bandages, rubbing alcohol, tissues, hand sanitizer, paper plates, napkins, utensils and wipes. “If I’m not replacing them, it’s not getting done,” she said. Ashley’s students can also wash their clothes using the school’s laundry machines.

    Students attending school without the resources they need is not unique to the United States. According to a 2024 report by the National Foundation for Educational Research in the United Kingdom, economically disadvantaged students there continue to arrive at school hungry and without necessary supplies and clothes like winter jackets. Nearly 20% of teachers in the UK are also reporting spending their own money to meet the welfare needs of their students.

    Equity versus equality

    Shannen said that it is important to understand the difference between equity and equality as a teacher. “If one of my kids said they didn’t have shoes, I would … make sure they got their shoes,” Shannen said. “For certain students [in need], I think schools should provide as much as possible to make sure they have the same opportunities. Sometimes equity is making sure certain kids are getting more so that in the long run it’s more equal.”

    Giving all this extra support can take a toll. Jill, a public high school teacher in New Jersey, takes on multiple roles but gets no additional support. That has affected her well-being and ability to do her job.

    “I have to be a social worker, psychologist, counselor, nurse, provider, all of it,” Jill said. “I came home crying the other day because a student has a severe drug problem at home, and also came out to me because he couldn’t come out to his parents. As this is happening, I have a whole class of 30 other kids who need my attention.”

    Jill said she could benefit from working with an aide in the classroom. Reporting by the National Education Association showed that today’s students have increasingly complex needs that would benefit from smaller class sizes.

    Ashley agrees that more professionals are needed at school. “We have six guidance counselors, a substance use counselor and a trauma counselor,” Ashley said. “We have a team of educational experts, social workers, psychologists and nurses. We probably have 25 different healthcare professionals. And that’s still not enough.”

    Who should pay for the essential needs of students?

    All of the teachers I interviewed also say their pay needs to reflect their workload. Salary is not keeping up with inflation and the economic challenges those in the United States are facing. Without the help of her partner’s income, Jill would not be able to afford the $3,000 monthly rent on their apartment. She has a master’s degree and her salary is $68,000 after 10 years of teaching.

    Carson is a former teacher at a private high school in Sacramento, California. He believes unions can advocate for burnt-out teachers.

    “Teachers’ unions usually help with salary, but they should help with managing expectations, like grading,” Carson said. “It wasn’t the teaching that burnt me out. It was … all the other stuff.”

    Education International is a global education union that believes the rights of teachers and students are intertwined — the right to dignity at work and the right to receive a quality education.

    Organizations in the United States that are members of Education International are the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

    “Teaching is a calling,” Carson said. “And that’s why I think teachers’ unions are important,” Carson added. “Teachers are naturally going to give and give. They need somebody looking out for them.”

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why are many schools becoming places that provide food and social services in addition to education?

    2. Why do some teachers feel compelled to pay for things like food and clothing for their students?

    3. In what ways are schools good places for the distribution of food and other public assistance to needy people?

     

     

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  • What’s not part of university requirements? Eating.

    What’s not part of university requirements? Eating.

    University systems have long been promoted as the most reliable path to upward mobility and economic security.

    Yet for a growing number of students, that promise is part of a troubling paradox: the act of seeking a degree requires a harrowing trade-off between paying for schooling and securing the eating. The result is a lack of physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life. It is a pervasive crisis of food insecurity,

    Today, nearly nine in 10 United States campuses operate food pantries or “basic need hubs,” serving thousands of students each semester.

    What began as a grassroots response to hunger is now becoming institutionalized — a subtle but significant shift in how universities define student success and well-being. According to a survey conducted by the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, a national research center at Temple University focused on transforming higher education to improve student success and well-being, 59% of students of students at 91 institutions across 16 states experience at least one form of basic needs insecurity, while 41% of students experienced food insecurity.

    Many campus pantries have transformed into one-stop centers that connect students with food assistance programs, financial aid, child-care resources and mental-health support.

    Finding the funds for food

    The Lancer Care Center, which began as the Lancer Pantry in 2015 at the Pasedena City College, has now been integrated into a centralized, holistic support center. Today, it provides coordinated assistance and functions as a single hub for various types of basic needs, ranging from housing, food, emergency funding, peer mentoring and financial assistance.

    Yet, even as they expand, most remain under-funded and overstretched: 60% of campus food pantries lack adequate refrigeration and many rely on short-term grants and student volunteers to operate.

    A survey conducted in 2023 by Swipe Out Hunger, a national non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating student hunger, reported that food pantries face three key challenges: funding, inventory and staffing. More than one in five among the 355 college food pantries surveyed reported that securing stable funding, maintaining streams of funding and obtaining grants remain the most significant challenges.

    Beyond calories, these spaces also provide something harder to quantify: trust.

    “If you have somebody that trusts a systemic function of your campus, like a food pantry, it is likely that they will also trust other systems that are in place,” said Laura Egan of the Clery Center, an organization that focuses on campus safety and student rights. “If and when they or someone they know needs to make a report of a crime or needs to access a resource because they are a survivor of a crime, they will be more likely to look to and trust their campus, who has already established a system of providing them regular support in a non-judgmental [way].”

    When hunger is hidden

    For Egan, said accessibility matters just as much as supply.

    “What we really appreciate seeing with food pantries on college campuses is the community support that it provides, the ready access that provides a student, with no questions asked about why you might need to access that resource,” she said.

    Despite their growing presence, hunger on campus often remains hidden, masked by stigma and assumptions about who is considered food insecure. New York University Izzy Morgan is the administrative coordinator at the College Student Pantry  New York City and says that many students don’t even realize that they are food insecure.

    “I come from a family with money and, you know, I have all these privileges,” Morgan said. “I’m on a pretty big scholarship at school, and even if all of that is true, you could still be insecure.”

    The College Student Pantry, operated by New York City’s Trinity’s Services and Food for the Homeless, serves college and graduate students across the city.

    Affording healthy food

    For Morgan, that self-realization came upon discovering that the pantry provided access to fresh vegetables that would otherwise be unaffordable.

     “Part of why I got this job was because my boss, who is actually my pastor, came up to me and said, ‘Izzy, I think you’re food insecure’,” Morgan said.

    Daniela Bermudez, a volunteer and Outreach and Social Media coordinator at the pantry, said that For many students, hunger is normalized as part of the college experience. “A lot of college students have this (assumption) that they’re supposed to struggle,” Bermudez said. “It’s almost normal to not have a well-balanced meal daily.”

    Understanding food insecurity often comes gradually. “It’s kind of hard to almost wrap your head (around the meaning of food insecurity),” Bermudez said. “I’m noticing that (when) I’m not eating the right food groups and I don’t necessarily have the continuous ability to access these foods, that is a sign of food insecurity.”

    Universities often measure success through graduation rates and employment outcomes, but for a growing number of students, success must depend on something far more basic: the ability to eat regularly, without shame or uncertainty. As higher education continues to market itself as a pathway out of poverty, the persistence of campus hunger raises an urgent question: Can institutions truly promise opportunity while leaving students to choose between a meal and a degree?

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why do many university students struggle to pay for food?

    2. What are universities doing to make sure students can eat?

    3. Do you think food should be a basic right for everyone? Why?

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  • The winners are …

    The winners are …

    A story about pollution caused when fires destroy cars and devices that are supposed to be ecological took first prize in News Decoder’s 18th storytelling competition.

    News Decoder published the article, “Are you storing toxic waste in your home or car?” by Paolo McCarrey on 11 November. McCarrey is a student at The Thacher School in California.

    Three stories tied for second place: A personal reflection, “What’s not talked about when you live overseas,” about the different forms racial discrimination can take in different countries by Aida Sherwani of Connecticut College in the United States; a story about discrimination and ignorance surrounding autism in Tanzania by Ramona-Blessing Mkunna, a student at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa; and an article about the effect of climate change on the wine industry in Belgium and France by Slav Karaslavov, a student at the European School Brussels II (EEBII) in Belgium.

    While News Decoder published Sherwani’s article in July, the stories by both Mkunna and Karaslavov were submitted in draft form.

    Two other unpublished drafts tied for third place: An article about climate illiteracy by Amaury Chauve, who also attends EEBII and a podcast by Catherine Araba Esaaba Dowuona-Addison, a student at SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College in Ghana, about the religious cult leader Jim Jones, who killed by poison some 900 of his followers in the 1970s.

    The judges were impressed.

    Of the first place winner, one judge noted that the interviews served as a valuable tool in the investigation. “I also find the argument central to current discussions around climate change solutions, so the timeliness is great,” the judge wrote.

    The winners were selected by a three-person jury that included Thadeus Greenson, an award-winning investigative reporter who serves as press education specialist at the First Amendment Coalition in California, News Decoder correspondent Christianez Ratna Kiruba, a physician and patient rights advocate in India who writes about healthcare issues and former News Decoder Student Ambassador Joshua Glazer, now a student at Emory University in the U.S. state of Georgia.

    They rated the entries based on set criteria: whether the author interviewed anyone for the story; whether the student reported the story without bias; whether the student considered different perspectives and the judge’s own subjective assessment about the quality of the story.

    News Decoder Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner was particularly impressed by the challenging topics students took on. “The entries knock back the notion that young people shy away from complexity,” she said. “Give them room to explore topics that interest them, give them to tools to find experts and reliable sources and they will dive into really complicated issues.”

    The entries came from 10 schools in six countries on four continents.

    Meeting professional standards

    To produce an article or podcast for the competition, the students needed to find an original topic, credible sources and experts to interview. For stories that explored personal experiences, they needed to dive deep into their feelings and into what was happening around them.

    “If you didn’t know that the entries were being done by people with no journalism experience you would think they had come from professional publications,” Burstiner said.

    For articles to be published on News Decoder, they have to meet professional standards. Students work through News Decoder’s approach, known as PRDR for Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise. The winning stories that were published went through that process. The other stories will be published in the next few weeks, after the students go through that final revision process.

    News Decoder also encourages students to write through a global lens, connecting problems in one community with similar problems in other countries.

    The contest is held two times a year in honor of the late Arch Roberts Jr., who served with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna after more than 12 years as a staff member with the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. With the backing of an anonymous donor, News Decoder was able to award a total of $800 in cash prizes to this year’s winners. The entries came from students across News Decoder’s network of school partners.

    To be considered for the contest, an entry must have been written by one or more students enrolled in a News Decoder partner institution.

    Learn more about News Decoder’s school partnership program.

    A list of all the winners:

    First place:

    Paolo McCarrey, The Thacher School (USA) for “Are you storing toxic waste in your home or car?”

    Second place: 

    Aida Sherwani, Connecticut College (USA) for “What’s not talked about when you live overseas”

    Ramona-Blessing Mkunna, African Leadership Academy (South Africa) for “The Misconception of Autism in Tanzania”

    Slav Karaslavov, EEBII (Belgium) for “From vine to bottle: Europe’s newest climate-caused crisis may significantly alter one of its oldest industries”

    Third Place: 

    Amaury Chauve, EEBII (Belgium), for “Can we tackle the problem of climate illiteracy?”

    Catherine Araba Esaaba Dowuona-Addison, SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College (Ghana) for “Paradise on Earth — a podcast”

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  • A track meet that pushes girls to greatness

    A track meet that pushes girls to greatness

    The crowd is electric. The starting gun goes off to begin a race, and you can hear and feel the passion of the crowd as they cheer. The announcer feeds the excitement, commentating every stride over the sound system, urging athletes to “pump those arms” and “keep moving.” It’s difficult not to get swept.

    These are the Colgate Women’s Games, the largest amateur track and field series in the United States, which kick off its 50th iteration this year with preliminary meets 28 December. 

    Watching the youngest athletes compete is witnessing sports in its purest form. There’s no pretense, calculated strategies or alternative agendas. It’s just grit, unbridled joy and the thrill of pushing their bodies to the limit. 

    Some triumph and some falter, but they all cross the finish line giving it their all, and that authenticity is what makes the Games special.

    The venue is packed wall-to-wall. Not an empty seat in sight. The athletes fill in every inch of space — so many that you can hardly see the floor beneath them. The girls wrap around what’s known at Colgate as “The Wall,” lining every side of the facility. 

    More than just a track meet

    The line of competitors is so long, it will snake around the entire facility in a sea of athletes waiting for their moment to shine.

    The fierce competitive spirit of the competitors and the crowd’s near proximity to the action combine to generate an almost tangible atmosphere. The energy doesn’t just fuel the competition, it elevates it, pushing performances to another level.

    The Colgate Women’s Games are more than just track meets. They are a gateway to opportunity that transforms lives, with more than 5,000 scholarships awarded, lifelong friendships cultivated and the start of Olympic and professional dreams, athletic and non-athletic.

    “It was some of the best memories I had at that time,” said Dalilah Muhammad, Olympic gold medalist and former 400-meter hurdles world record holder. “Just being a kid, nervous and excited at the same time, while being able to do it with your friends. For me, that was the most important aspect of it. It made me feel like I had a place that I belonged to with friends, that all wanted to be there and do the same thing.”

    The goal is to foster a robust sense of personal accomplishment and self-worth while supporting the coaches who serve as role models and mentors for the girls.

    Ideas sketched out on a napkin

    Alumni include 29 Olympians, countless national champions and current and former world and national record holders at the senior, junior and youth levels. Former competitors now work as teachers, judges, lawyers, executives and ESPN anchors. One of the most recognizable is ESPN SportsCenter anchor Amina Smith.

    The Colgate Women’s Games were the brainchild of Fred Thompson, a New York attorney and founder of a Brooklyn girls’ track club who was frustrated with the state of women’s athletics in the mid-1970s.

    Thompson was an ABC network sportscaster, and was invited to an event hosted by the Colgate-Palmolive Company — a corporate giant known for soap and toothpaste — for the unveiling of a video presentation titled “Colgate’s Women in Sports,” to air on ABC’s telecast of the newly-launched Dinah Shore golf tournament. 

    The video included a segment on Thompson’s Atoms Track Club, where girl athletes trained. In the video they talked about training as well as school, why they enjoyed running and their aspirations on and off the track. It caught the eye of Colgate President David Foster. He saw that Thompson had found a way to instill in women a drive for excellence that would carry over to college and careers. 

    Foster wanted his company to replicate in communities around the country what Thompson had done in his community. 

    “[They were talking] for a long time, scribbling some stuff on a napkin and I’m sitting there wondering what is going on?” said Cheryl Toussaint, an alum of the Atoms Track Club. Toussaint had won a silver medal in the women’s 4 × 400 meters relay at the 1972 Olympics. She is now the Meet Director of the Colgate Women’s Games, having taken over the position from Thompson.

    Getting girls to plan for their future

    But back then, the Games were just rough ideas. Thompson and the Colgate execs wanted to bolster the sport for women, give them more opportunities and provide scholarships that could be applied to any level of education.

    A pilot program at a local college gym drew a massive turnout. Colgate-Palmolive saw that with awards and scholarship opportunities, it could be something that would resonate.

    Now, the Games consist of eight events — six track distances plus shot put and high jump — in six divisions for the women to compete in.

    Competitors collect points for results in preliminary rounds, and those with the highest numbers move on to the semi-finals and the grand finale on 7 February 2026, which will be available livestream on ArmoryTrack.org. 

    The top six finishers in each event will receive a trophy and the top three finishers will be rewarded an additional educational scholarship in denominations of $2,000, $1,000 and $500. Special awards are also given for most outstanding and improved performances as well as most promising performance from a newcomer.

    From local to national

    All girls and women from elementary school grades 1 and up are eligible to participate in the Colgate Women’s Games. No prior experience in track and field is necessary, but all girls of school-age must be enrolled and attending school in order to participate.

    As the years continued, the Games began to grow from a local meet, to a regional meet and even a national meet where girls from states such as Georgia, Arizona and Texas would travel to New York to compete.

    But it’s the finals that set the Games apart. The finals aren’t just the last series of races; it’s a celebration, a ceremony marking the culmination of the preliminary and semifinal rounds.

    Muhammad and many other Olympians such as Nia Ali, Ajee Wilson, Natasha Hastings, Kim Thomas Barnes (Carter), Diane Dixon and Athing Mu got their start here. The Olympians produced by the Games would represent multiple nations, demonstrating their international reach.

    The Games’ impact extends beyond the track; the skills and confidence built from competing has led to careers in education, medicine, business, law, media and beyond. Some Games alumni, like basketball star Lorin Dixon, went on to excel in other sports.

    Scholarships get girls thinking about college.

    Colgate Women’s Games gives the competitors the chance to earn scholarships to college as early as Grade 1, around the age of 6 or 7, which gets parents and guardians planning that early for a college path for their daughters. If they continue competing, the scholarships accumulate.  

    If the scholarship earners opt out of college, they can apply that scholarship to career training.

    For the women who would go on to run track at the high school and collegiate level, the Games introduced them to the scoring system. The girls learn at an early age how their performance affects their score and overall placement in the meet, along with race strategies to earn the maximum number of points possible. 

    This knowledge helps when competing at the next level where point scoring is a crucial aspect to high school and collegiate track.

    Empowering women through sports

    Numerous alumni have embraced the Colgate Women’s Games’ mission of empowering young girls and women.

    Consider Olicia Williams, Games’ alum and three-time All-American at Baylor University, who after years of mentoring youth and serving the community through The Armory Foundation, along with coaching her high school and college alma mater, created Lili’s Lionesses Track Club, a program focused on enabling young women to thrive in academics, sports and personal development.

    Impact alone doesn’t ensure survival. The Games continue to thrive after 50 years because their model is built on values that extend beyond any single season or generation.

    Foremost, it’s a developmental series. Because it’s not a one-off competition, girls with no experience can come to each competition and learn as they compete. They learn they don’t need expensive equipment to participate in the sport.

    Toussaint pointed out that the series not only develops competitors from a physical standpoint; it develops them mentally. 

    “When younger girls fall down, come in last or get bumped out of competition and feel dejected, we help them understand that it’s just one day,” Toussaint said. “We tell them and their parents, this is a place to learn what you’re made of, develop your skills and improve on what you did before.”

    Eliminating barriers

    The Games are free for the competitors. This makes it different from the many track meets and running events that are surprisingly expensive. 

    Muhammad said that everyone is there for the right reasons. “No one’s there doing it for any type of money and that’s what makes Colgate so great,” she said. “You have great people doing it for a cause that’s bigger than themselves and it’s inspiring.”

    Thompson died in 2019 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. But his legacy lives on through all the lives he’s helped, and he would be thrilled to see the Games’ 50th anniversary, says Toussaint. “He would cry tears of joy,” she said. 

    Women’s sports have finally surged into the mainstream. There’s WNBA stars A’ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu launching signature shoes that are high performing in sales, and women headlining Ultimate Fighting Championship events and selling out arenas. There’s Serena Williams transcending sport to become a global icon. But it’s important to remember that this success didn’t emerge spontaneously. It was built by pioneers who invested in women athletes long before it was profitable or popular.

    The Colgate Women’s Games belong in that conversation as a cornerstone of women’s sports.

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is one thing about the Colgate Women’s Games that makes it different from other track and field competitions for women?

    2. How can sports help girls off the field?

    3. In what ways can competition be both good and bad?



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  • Let’s have no locks on learning

    Let’s have no locks on learning

    At News Decoder we believe that information should flow across borders and that you shouldn’t need money to access it. That’s why we’ve created resources for both young people and educators that are open access — they are free and available to anyone. It is our mission, after all, to inform, connect and empower young people to be engaged citizens and changemakers locally, nationally and globally.

    These free resources include articles, podcasts and videos that offer young people tips on writing and reporting and information they need to be media literate such as guides for fact-checking news stories and verifying the accuracy of information. We also make publicly accessible our Decoder Dialogues —  in which we gather young people from different countries together with experts to talk about an important topic. You can watch our latest Decoder Dialogue on how young people speak out and stand up that took place 2 December. 

    For a great read on how some places are addressing the problems of paywalls on academic and scientific research, check out Charissa Eggers recent article for News Decoder. 

    Below are a series of useful guides for student journalists or for anyone who wants to become a better storyteller. 

    And check out more of our open access learning resources. 

    https://news-decoder.com/top-tips-can-you-be-the-bearer-of-good-news/ 

     

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  • When will we listen to what young people say?

    When will we listen to what young people say?

    Imagine adding your thoughts to a conversation, only to have them dismissed by the group — and not because of what you said, but because they thought you were too young to know what you are talking about or understand the topic at hand.

    That’s what teens around the world face when they try to participate in “adult” conversations.

    On Tuesday 2 December, we gathered seven people from six countries in a live virtual roundtable to discuss whether and how young people are able to speak out and be heard. Five teens from News Decoder partners schools in India, South Africa and the United States were joined by News Decoder correspondent Alfonso Silva-Santisteban from Peru and Marouane El Bahraoui, a research intern at the Carter Center in the United States and African Leadership Academy alum originally from Morocco.

    When we asked each of the teens whether they felt they were listened to, they all agreed on one thing: When talking to their peers they felt understood and respected. But when trying to get their opinions across in a room of adults, they were often dismissed and felt disrected.

    “If I’m talking about a certain topic to my peers and they already have that knowledge already, they already know what I’m talking about, then it’s much easier for them to actually hear me and understand me,” said Ramona-Blessing Mkunna, a Tanzanian student studying at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa.

    Some voices are valued more.

    Sophie De Lavandeyra, a student at The Hewitt School in New York City said that she feels that even when she speaks to teachers or family members, she is heard and listened to but not equally valued. “And ultimately, there’s this sense of ‘I’m a student, I’m a child’, so therefore my opinions must be not as valued as other adults in my community,” she said.

    Sydney also attends Hewitt and said that the problem of being heard is more pronounced for girls. “I think people can undermine our opinions or statements and beliefs that we have,” she said.

    Mahee Mantri, a student at VIBGYOR High in India said that she feels that people look at age and not experience, and that while her experiences might be different, they should still be considered valid. It seems, she said, that the age difference gives some people an excuse to not listen.

    That young people feel they aren’t heard may be the one unifying aspect of what we call the “Gen Z” generation — the first generation to be born in a fully-digital world.

    El Bahraoui said that if there is a Gen Z movement, it is one that doesn’t have a leader and it doesn’t have a specific set of demands, but the demands they do have seem to cross borders: lowering unemployment, ending nepotism and corruption, slowing down climate change.

    “Young people are afraid of the uncertain future or the uncertainty of the future. That’s why there is all this anger and people going out to the street and protesting because people want some stability some certainty,” he said.

    From anger to action

    In many places, like Kenya, to get heard youth are taking to the streets in protests and when they do, it has produced results, El Bahraoui said. “Some protests led to the dissolution of the house of representatives,” he said. “Some protests led to the ousting of the president or the head of state. Other protests led only to the government removing a financial bill, such as the case in Kenya. There was a tax bill and then Gen Z protests went to the streets and the government just removed that bill, instead of removing the whole government or the whole parliament.”

    Silva-Santisteban said some of the frustrations young people have is that even when protests produce change, often those changes aren’t long-lasting or significant.

    “There’s an outburst of outrage and young people are called to be responsible of the change. Like they’re the spearheads of the protest. And at some point they become responsible of the change, but then the conditions are the same, especially in a country [like] Peru where you have a political crisis, a lot of conditions for unemployment.”

    Meanwhile, the young people that took to the streets face violence and are stigmatized, he said.

    The young people in the roundtable seemed to agree that shouting demands might not be the most effective way to get heard. Instead it comes down to an ongoing process of talking to people you might not agree with, and more important listening respectfully to what they have to say.

    Dialogue is needed.

    Anna Bamugye, a Ugandan student at the African Leadership Academy, said that you can’t force your opinions on people. “It’s about understanding each other and where you’re coming from,” she said. “And most of the time, we find comfort in talking to those who understand what we’re trying to convey, what the message we’re trying to say.”

    But in order to get a message to people, you must talk to people who may not understand you. “You have to talk to people who have different views,” she said. “To hear where other people are coming from allows you to understand, and maybe just help understand how you can shift that person’s perspective and understand where both parties are coming from.”

    In this way too, she said, you could learn something from them that you had never thought of.

    Mkunna said that If the goal is to raise awareness, you have to consider the most effective way of doing that. She has cousins who were born with autism and has found that in Tanzania people are largely ignorant about autism. As a result, autistic people face discrimination. She decided to launch a social media campaign to educate people about autism. “I think it really helped,” she said. “Because we got a chance to go on national TV and we went on radio and we talked about autism.”

    In New York, Del Cid and De Lavandeyra found themselves angry about the immigration raids taking place in New York and all over the country. Del Cid channeled her anger into photography. “So I personally use my art and the images that I take to kind of convey a story and a narrative,” she said.

    De Lavandeyra wrote an AI program using a large language model, that lets people who speak little English get questions answered. The program allows them “to be able to chat in whatever language is their home language, and be able to ask questions and get their legal answers based off [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] data,” she said. “But written in a way where they could understand, and it was not just a bunch of legal jargon that felt unintelligible for them and something they weren’t being able to process.”

    Mantri said that it is important to both listen and speak up. “I feel there is a generation gap which I experienced in my parents or their generation, and in my generation we question why — why is it things are like that?” she said. “I always like to question why is it like this and they probably just hear it and consider it as back answering or disrespect.”

     Questions to consider:

    1. What is the difference between being heard and having someone listen to what you say?

    2. Why is the ability to listen to what people say important if you want to get your opinions across?

    3. In what ways do you try to get your voice heard?

     

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  • Dishing out healthy food options kids will eat

    Dishing out healthy food options kids will eat

    In New York City, a surprising culinary shift is happening where few expect it: inside city agencies that serve up to 219 million meals and snacks a year. From hospitals to shelters, New York is quietly leading a global experiment to reshape the diets of millions, not by persuasion but through policy. 

    Food is sitting at the crossroads of two global crises: chronic disease and climate change. The World Health Organization estimates that in 2017, 11 million deaths were attributable to unhealthy diets that were high in processed meat, sodium and added sugar and low in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. 

    Climate change, in addition to the consequences of extreme weather events, makes existing challenges worse on communities, environments and systems that sustain life. 

    More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, where 70% of global CO2 emissions are generated from transport, buildings and energy use. According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly 1.7 billion people living in cities and areas around them face food insecurity, making cities the new frontline in the fight against malnutrition. 

    The report calls on governments to use public budgets to buy and serve healthier food, prioritize buying from local, agroecological and small-scale farmers and integrate food planning into urban policies on health, transport, housing and waste. 

    We are what we eat.

    According to the United Nations Environment Programme, how people live — what they eat, how they move and what goods they consume — matters just as much as what governments do. Some governments, like New York’s, are turning sustainable living from a personal choice into a shared system: using their purchasing power to serve millions of plant-forward meals that put vegetables, legumes and grains at the center of the plate across public institutions, and coupling procurement with education and food policy to make diets a driver of both health and sustainability. 

    This makes these cities critical testing grounds for climate solutions, where policies that reshape diets toward more plant-rich, low-carbon meals can contribute directly to urban emissions reduction while improving health. 

    Since signing the C40 Good Food Cities Declaration in 2019, mayors across the world have pledged to make healthy and sustainable eating the norm by buying food aligned with the Planetary Health Diet, which promotes serving more plant-based meals, cutting food waste by half and working across communities, businesses and institutions to integrate these goals into their climate action plans. 

    New York is not alone. In Copenhagen, kitchen staff across more than 500 public kitchens are being trained to prepare nutritious, organic and climate-friendly meals as the city works toward its goal of making 90% of its food organic. In Quezon City in the Philippines, a partnership with Scholars of Sustenance, a nonprofit environmental organization tackling food waste, helped recover and distribute surplus food, providing roughly 22,000 meals for people in need within the first four months of the program. Across the world, cities are rethinking how the meals served through public programs can nourish both people and the planet. 

    In 2021, New York launched an ambitious 10-year plan with five goals: to support food businesses and strengthen protections for food workers; to modernize supply chains; to provide food that is produced, distributed and disposed of sustainably; to promote community engagement and cross-sector co-ordination; and to improve the nutrition and food security of New Yorkers. 

    Building health into a food system

    The city’s updated Food Standards go further: They ban processed meats and deep frying, require two or more servings a week at lunch and dinner to feature plant proteins and limit beef and other meats, such as lamb and mutton, to a maximum of two servings a week at facilities serving three meals a day. These standards touch nearly every corner of city life; they guide what’s served in schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, correctional facilities and senior centers, which adds up to 219 million meals and snacks each year. 

    New York challenges the idea that sustainable diets are solely individual choices, reframing them as civic responsibility. 

    “Food standards are the reinforcement piece for our departments and agencies to align with those values,” said Ora Kemp, senior policy adviser in the Office of the Mayor of New York City. “So those get developed with a very clear and distinct goal of being able to promote, protect and preserve the health of those that we serve through our food service, while simultaneously ensuring that the food is delicious and is culturally representative of the people that we serve.” 

    Transparency is also a central tool in this transformation. The Good Food Purchasing initiative, established in 2022, requires vendors to share data, such as the origin of the food and meals the city buys. 

    The lesson of the city’s policies for the public’s health is simple: People embrace change when it still feels like home. 

    “We have a policy that if 20% of the population is of any religious or ethnic group, then we need to make sure that food is provided for that group,” says Lorraine Cortés-Vásquez, commissioner of the New York City Department for the Aging. “It is very important for us that we manage the requirements, but also look at demand, interest and palate, because we want to respect culture and respect traditions, but we also want people to consume the food.” 

    Sustainable food choices

    In a citywide Cook-Off hosted by the Department for the Aging, chefs came together to demonstrate the flavor, creativity and nutrition of plant-based food, while also bringing the community together. 

    “Most older adults want to live in the community, in the communities that they build,” Cortés-Vásquez said. “They’re an asset, they bring revenue.” 

    Kemp said that plant-based menu options are also a low-effort way to encourage sustainable food choices. 

    “It’s not just the first and not just the second [exposure], but we offer the plant-based default multiple times throughout someone’s stay within any of our health and hospital systems in an attempt to encourage them to choose healthier diets,” Kemp said. 

    Preliminary data from New York City Health and Hospitals demonstrate that the shift is clear: 90% of patients who received plant-based meals report satisfaction. 

    Nicole Bonica, deputy director of menu management at the Office of Food and Nutrition Services for New York City Public Schools, says success depends on building a menu that students also like and that they feel will benefit them. This can be tricky. “Older students, they have preferences,” Bonica said. “Girls may not want to eat so many calories, because they’re watching themselves, whereas the boys actually want more protein items, maybe because they’re in more athletics.”

    The success of Plant-Powered Fridays, where school cafeterias feature a plant-based dish as the primary menu item, has led to additional offerings of plant-powered meals throughout the week in schools. Rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber and protein, these meals must align with both New York City Food Standards and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 

    While this experiment is still unfolding, city governments may offer the most hopeful ingredient of all: changing what a city eats can change what a city stands for. In kitchens that once served convenience, chefs now serve climate action, health and dignity on the same plate. If New York can make sustainability taste good, perhaps the rest of the world can too. 

    Questions to consider:

    1. How is food connected to climate change?

    2. What is one thing New York City is doing to get young people to eat healthier?

    3. Can you think of ways you could change your diet to make it healthier?

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  • With News Decoder, students explore their role in the world

    With News Decoder, students explore their role in the world

    Back in 2020, during the height of the Covid epidemic, high school students in the U.S. state of Connecticut sat down with News Decoder founder Nelson Graves to explore a number of thorny topics that ranged from the death penalty to whether animals should be kept in zoos.

    The students in “American Voices & Choices: Ethics in Modern Society” at Westover School had been working with News Decoder since the start of that academic year, mastering the process we call Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise — or PRDR — to identify topical issues at the intersection of ethics and public policy.

    They pitched ideas they wanted to report on: teen health; police brutality; abortion; economic privilege in the environmental movement; the risks of experimental vaccines; the impact of alcohol on youth.

    Later, each student received detailed feedback from a News Decoder editor, aimed at helping them narrow their research and produce original reporting.

    Westover was an early News Decoder school partner. Since our founding 10 years ago, News Decoder has worked with high school and university students in 89 schools across 23 countries.

    Decoding news in school

    Teachers have used us as part of their course curricula, as extra credit assignments and as standalone learning opportunities for their students.

    At Realgymnasium Rämibühl Zürich in Switzerland, teacher Martin Bott brings News Decoder in each year. In one weeklong workshop, students produced podcasts. Over five days, they pitched News Decoder stories about a problem they identified in their local communities, identified an expert to interview, found how that problem was relevant to people in other countries and then wrote a podcast script, revised it and recorded it. “[News Decoder] enabled me to do a few projects which really open up perspectives for the students, give them a taste of life beyond the classroom and of the world of journalism,” Bott said. 

    In another workshop for RGZH, News Decoder turned students into “foreign correspondents.” They were tasked with finding stories in Zurich that people in other countries would find interesting. Like the students in the podcasting workshop, they then found an expert to interview, wrote a draft and revised it with the goal of publishing it on News Decoder. 

    One student in the workshop noticed a demonstration of people with dogs and got up the nerve to talk to one of them. They were from an organization that rescued Spanish greyhounds and she decided it would be a good idea for a News Decoder story. The story she wrote ended up as one of News Decoder’s most-read stories of all time.

    Not only have Bott’s students been able to publish stories on News Decoder, many of these stories, including the article about the greyhounds, have won awards in our twice yearly global storytelling competition. 

    “We’ve been delighted to get so many of those stories published on News Decoder,” Bott said. “That’s very, very motivating for the students. And it’s a wonderful learning process for them because they realise it’s not just about school rules and so on out there.”

    Challenging students to do more

    Bott said that working with professionals at News Decoder gets the students to step up. “When you’re a journalist, you’ve got a responsibility,” he said. “That’s something we’ve been able to talk about with journalists who’ve met us from various parts of the world through News Decoder. And you’ve got real pressure as well. And they’re not, I think they’re not quite used to that. So it really opens their eyes.”

    At The Hewitt School in New York, 15 teens at the all-girls school meet once a month as a club. They read and discuss News Decoder stories and pitch their own stories. They also prepare for a cross-border webinar; each year they join with students from a News Decoder partner school in another country, and decide with those students on a topic to explore. 

    They then research the topic, interview experts and come together with the students from the other school to present their findings live in a video conference before an audience of people from the two schools.

    In 2024, students from The Thacher School in California worked with peers at the European School of Brussels II on a webinar on consumerism and the human impacts of climate change. 

    Russell Spinney is faculty adviser for News Decoder at Thacher. “The webinars really were kind of ways just to get to know each other, discover that we actually do have some common interests. But not only that, that we also have problems that are similar,” he said. 

    “News Decoder’s workshops,” he said, “get students to think of ways to communicate their research beyond the classroom and connect with what’s going on in the world.” News Decoder has partnered schools this way in some 50 school-school webinars. 

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  • Can we close the “knowledge gap”?

    Can we close the “knowledge gap”?

    Can we close the “knowledge gap”?

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  • When young people ask big questions and seek answers

    When young people ask big questions and seek answers

    Cliffrene Haffner attended the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her university applications were stalling and she felt stressed and anxious.

    “Life felt unstable, as if I were hanging by a thin thread,” Haffner said. But it was at ALA that she discovered News Decoder.

    “Joining News Decoder helped me rebuild my voice,” she wrote. “It created a place to write honestly and with purpose whilst supporting others in telling their stories. At a time when the world felt numb and disconnected, we used storytelling to bring back hope on campus by sharing our fears, thoughts and expectations.”

    At News Decoder, students work with professional editors and news correspondents to explore complicated, global topics. They have the opportunity to report and write news stories, research and present findings in global webinars with students from other countries, produce podcasts and sit in on live video roundtables with experts and their peers across the globe.

    Many get their articles published on News Decoder’s global news site.

    A different way of seeing the world

    Out of these experiential learning activities, they take away important skills valuable in their later careers, whatever those careers might be: How to communicate clearly, how to recognize multiple perspectives, how to cut through jargon and propaganda and separate facts from opinion and speculation.

    One milestone for many of these is our Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise process, which we call PRDR. In it, students pitch a story topic to News Decoder with a plan on how to research and report it. We ask them to identify different perspectives on problems they want to explore and experts they can reach out to for information and context.

    Then we guide them through a process of introspection, if the story is a personal reflection on their own experience, or a process of reporting and interviewing. News Decoder doesn’t promise students that their stories will get published at the end of the process. They have to work for that — revising their drafts until the finished story is clear and relevant to a global audience.

    One student who went through the process was Joshua Glazer, now a student at Emory University in the United States. Glazer came to News Decoder in high school as an exchange student in Spain with School Year Abroad.

    “I think the skills that I got out of that went on to really change the course of my education and how I view the world,” Glazer said. “Because when you step into the world of journalism you learn a different way of seeing the world.”

    Recognizing our biases

    Glazer learned that for journalism, he had to be less opinionated. “You have to really approach things kind of as they are in the world,” Glazer said. “And that is hard to do. That is not an easy skill that we can do as humans because we inherently have biases.”

    He said it challenged him to look inwards and recognize his biases and counter them with evidence.

    “So I think those skills have really changed the course of how I view having an argument with somebody because all of a sudden, you know, when you have an argument with someone, it’s all opinion,” he said.

    For Haffner, who is now a business administration student at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, News Decoder reshaped how she and her peers understood storytelling.

    “It taught us to let go of rigid biases and to make authenticity the centre of our work,” Haffner said. “Students from different backgrounds found a space where their voices were heard, respected and valued. Our stories formed a shared map, each one opening a new room to explore, each voice strengthening the collective journey we were on. In that chaotic period, we created something meaningful together. Something bigger than us.”

    Working through the complexity of a topic

    Marouane El Bahraoui, a research intern at The Carter Center in the U.S. state of Georgia, also discovered News Decoder at the African Leadership Academy. At the time, he was interested in writing about the effectiveness of the Arab Maghreb Union — an economic bloc of five North African countries. He grew up in Morocco but didn’t want to approach the topic from a purely Moroccan perspective.

    “It was like a very raw idea,” he said.

    He pitched the story and worked with both News Decoder Founder Nelson Graves and correspondent Tom Heneghan to refine the idea. They guided him in the reporting and writing process.

    “One aspect that I liked a lot from my research was the people that I had the chance to talk to,” he said. “It was during Covid and I was just at home and I’m talking to, you know, professors in U.S. universities, I’m talking to UN officials, experts working in think tanks in D.C. and I was thinking oh those people are just so far, you can’t even reach them. And then you have a conversation with them and they’re just normal people.”

    He also found writing the story daunting. “It was a little bit overwhelming for me at the time,” he said. “You know, you’re not writing like an academic essay.”

    Graves encouraged him to write in a straightforward manner. In school, he had been taught to write in a beautiful way to impress.

    “From News Decoder, something I learned is to always keep the audience in mind who you are speaking to, who are you writing to,” he said.

    He took away the importance of letting readers make their own conclusions. “You’re not writing to tell the reader what to think,” he said. “You are writing to give them ideas and arguments, facts and leave the thinking for them.”

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